Nintendo VR Power Gloves

Nintendo has come up with some brilliant products in the past that reminded us the power of imagination, creativity, and innovation. One of those items was the Nintendo Power Gloves that allowed users to play games in a futuristic sense. The Power Glove allowed you to play 2D games with this unique motion-sensor controller. It was first released in 1989 that came equipped with 8 bits of power and 2 transmitters that allowed you to play games such as Rad Racer. Now, with some clever engineering, you can use the Power Glove on the modern VR platform.

Some creative minds at Teague Labs were able to re-utilize the glove using the HTC Vive tracker to bring it into the 3D world. They were easily able to use hand gestures with the available data. They rigged up a hand model to respond to the sensor data of the Power Glove and worked pretty easily. Teague Labs were also able to create a demo based on the original Power Glove Branding where you can shoot lightning by making a fist. One of the benefits of using the Power Glove on an HTC Vive is that users can simulate more natural interactions.

More information:

https://www.vrandfun.com/can-now-use-nintendo-power-gloves-vr/

Researchers Night 2017

On the 06^th of October 2017, there was the demonstration of Researchers' Night with topic 'mobility'. There were many visitors, exploring science whilst having fun and experiencing novel research methods in different areas of HCI.

The HCI Lab has presented a number of interesting demos, covering areas of immersive virtual reality, brain-computer interfaces, motion capturing and 3D printing.  More than 250 people have experienced our demos.

More information:

https://www.fi.muni.cz/index.xhtml.en

Video Gamers Seem to Have Advantage in Learning

Neuropsychologists of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum let video gamers compete against non-gamers in a learning competition. During the test, the video gamers performed significantly better and showed an increased brain activity in the brain areas that are relevant for learning. The research team studied 17 volunteers who according to their own statement, played action-based games on the computer or a console for more than 15 hours a week. The control group consisted of 17 volunteers who didn't play video games on a regular basis. Both teams did the so-called weather prediction task, a well-established test to investigate the learning of probabilities. The researchers simultaneously recorded the brain activity of the participants via magnetic resonance imaging.

The participants were shown a combination of three cue cards with different symbols. They should estimate whether the card combination predicted sun or rain and got a feedback if their choice was right or wrong right away. The volunteers gradually learned, on the basis of the feedback, which card combination stands for which weather prediction. The combinations were thereby linked to higher or lower probabilities for sun and rain. According to the questionnaire results, the gamers were notably better in combining the cue cards with the weather predictions than the control group. They fared even better with cue card combinations that had a high uncertainty such as a combination that predicted 60 percent rain and 40 percent sunshine.

More information:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170929125104.htm

Antikythera Shipwreck Yields Bronze Arm

Marine archaeologists have recovered a bronze arm from an ancient shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, where the remains of at least seven more priceless statues from the classical world are believed to lie buried. Divers found the right arm, encrusted and stained green, under half a metre of sediment on the boulder-strewn slope where the ship and its cargo now rest. The huge vessel, perhaps 50m from bow to stern, was sailing from Asia Minor to Rome in 1BC when it foundered near the tiny island between Crete and the Peloponnese. The project team, from the Greek Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities and Lund University in Sweden, discovered the buried arm with a bespoke underwater metal detector which has revealed the presence of other large metal objects nearby under the seabed.

The Antikythera wreck first came to light in 1900 when Greek sponge divers happened on the scene in 50 metres of water. Archaeologists have since pulled up spectacular bronze and marble statues, ornate glass and pottery, stunning pieces of jewellery, and a remarkable geared device – the Antikythera mechanism – which modelled the motion of the heavens. During the 2017 excavations, divers recovered a bronze disc that may be a missing part of the ancient device. But it is the statues that made the wreck famous. In the 1900s, archaeologists working at the site surfaced pieces of a beautiful Hellenistic bronze, named the Antikythera Youth. The statue now stands in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens alongside an impressive bronze head named the Antikythera philosopher, also hauled from the wreck.

More information:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/oct/04/antikythera-shipwreck-yields-new-treasures-and-hints-of-priceless-classical-statues

The World's First 8K VR Headset

Pimax 8K allows users to experience VR with Peripheral vision while solving the problem of screen door effect and motion sickness. Pimax 8K VR has been built to support the mainstream content currently available in the market, including Steam VR, while offering the largest field-of-view (FOV) of 200° and the highest resolution (2*3840x2160) on any VR headset on the market with less than 15ms latency.

Users can simply use their peripheral vision instead of constantly moving their head, making for a more intuitive experience. The company also addressed and reduced one of the key visual shortcomings of VR technology. Known as the 'screen door effect', this is the phenomenon where the eye can detect the fine line between pixels in an image - something which, in VR can hinder immersion and the experience as a whole.

More information:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pimax8kvr/pimax-the-worlds-first-8k-vr-headset